RENE a.k.a. „Le Bedeau“

Born 1945 in Quemeneven – FRANCE.

Raised by a mentally retarded mother, René „le Bedeau“ had to be sent to an orphanage at the age of five. He could not read nor write but was diagnosed with no particular illness. At the age of twenty, he entered the Hospice of Plouescat and worked as a beadle (hence his nickname) ; he began suffering from hallucinations. In 1969, he was committed into the psychiatric hospital of Quimper. We do not really know when he started to draw. He worked mostly in his room, using all kinds of paper. He transformed all objects he drew – knives, coffins, guitars, glasses, televisions, cameras, scissors, frying pans – into symbols, creating his own ideographic language that only he could understand.